Falling Apart (Just To Come Back Together)
by luvsbitca
Summary: Derek Hale is a journalist. A good one, he'd travelled the world and lived everywhere. He was from a small town in California called Beacon Hills known for its corn and being the site of a giant meteor strike in the eighties. This is his story, and also the story of how he became Superman.


**Title –** Falling Apart (Just To Come Back Together)  
 **Author –** Moonbeam  
 **Rating –** Teen (because of some swearing)  
 **Warnings –** Nothing  
 **Summary –** Derek Hale is a journalist. A good one, he'd travelled the world and lived everywhere. He was from a small town in California called Beacon Hills known for its corn and being the site of a giant meteor strike in the eighties. This is his story, and also the story of how he became Superman.  
 **Disclaimer –** Don't own either universe or the characters – just Netflix, DVDs, and a highly suggestive brain. **  
Author's Notes –** Okay, so this is stillnot me finishing my WIPs, and I'm not even going to try and feel bad.  
Chapter titles from Kryponite – 3 Doors Down. There is just so much fun to be had in the fusion.

 **Falling Apart (Just To Come Back Together)**  
by Moonbeam

-)(-)(- Chapter One – I Took A Walk Around The World -)(-)(-

Stiles Stilinski was an investigative journalist. An excellent one, he always got the story he went after and he always reported the truth. He worked for the best newspaper in the world, The Daily Planet.

This isn't Stiles Stilinski's story.

Kal-El was a baby whose parents loved him. They were going to die and they sent him alone in a tiny little spacecraft from their planet Krypton on a journey among the stars to Earth where he crash landed in a small town called Beacon Hills known for its corn. He was found by a lovely couple, Talia and Jonathan Hale who took him in and loved him like he was one of their own.

This isn't Kal-El's story either.

Superman was smoke and mirrors and nothing real. He was a costume and hair gel. He was a fake and a fraud and yet he was the only thing the people of Metropolis had to cling to when the world turned to darkness and the hate and evil inside of Man was threatening to forever burn the world.

This is not Superman's story.

Derek Hale was a journalist. A good one, he'd travelled the world and lived everywhere. He was from a small town in California called Beacon Hills known for its corn and being the site of a giant meteor strike in the eighties.

This is Derek Hale's story.

-)(-)(-

When Derek Hale was eleven years old he found out that he was adopted. It made sense – he didn't look like his mother or father and neither of his sisters had his mercurial green eyes or his introverted nature. The rest of his family were talkers, loud and open, but Derek had never really been like them. It had never bothered him until he found the spaceship; found the proof that he was _different_ to everyone else – not just everyone in his family, but everyone on the whole planet. Derek never doubted that his parents loved him – they loved all of their children. But, he struggled with the knowledge that they had been lying to him for ten years.

Talia and Jonathan sat all three of them down – Laura who'd been only eighteen months old when they'd found Derek, and Cora who was only eight and a half. They explained that the day after the horrifying meteor shower that had rocked Beacon Hills ten years before, they found Derek – a baby who looked about a year old abandoned by the side of the road. Jonathan Kent had called in a favour with someone who he'd only ever call Duke, to have Derek's adoption legalised.

Derek had always been strong, fast, never ill – being an alien wasn't the explanation that Derek expected but he'd always been different and what his parents told him that day made a sick sort of sense. They told them all to be careful – to never mention this to anyone – not a soul. Derek's origins were their biggest secret – a family secret; one that would never, could never, be shared with anyone or they might lose Derek forever.

Derek didn't really believe he was an alien though until he turned sixteen. Before that, he was little faster, a little stronger, the kid who never got sick. But, when he turned sixteen Paige moved to Beacon Hills. And Derek fell in love – she was amazing, bright and sweet, and Derek was captivated by her. At the same time Derek's Uncle Peter came back to town. He was Talia's brother but he'd not been around much through Derek's life. But, he was Derek's absolute favourite person – the other person who wasn't quite the same as the rest of the family. Peter didn't know about Derek though – his mother had been very clear about no one but the five of them ever knowing. It was Peter that Derek was able to talk about Paige with. It was Peter who supported Derek in trying to get to know the girl better - his mother just kept saying that he was better off not letting anyone get too close.

His mother was right.

If it had not have been for Derek, Paige wouldn't have been with him.

If it hadn't have been for Derek, Paige would have been in the city where the alarm sounded with enough time for people to get to safety.

But she wasn't, she was at the old cave where Derek had always gone for solitude and a break from his family. He'd been so desperate to show her his special place that he hadn't thought about the danger that came at that time of year. They were underground, sitting among the large roots of the tree that had once stood at this spot so they didn't hear the wind, didn't feel the rain. The first thing that signalled the fact there was a hurricane coming was the sound. Deafening, howling wind and Derek had pulled away from Paige's lips – he'd rushed to the entrance of the underground tunnel and had seen it. The hurricane wasn't far enough away for them to try and leave so they'd taken refuge as deep into the trees roots as possible. It hadn't been good enough. The hurricane passed directly over them – the first part wasn't too bad, Paige tucked in front of Derek for protection, but then the calm had come and they'd been stupid enough to think that was it – it was over. It wasn't over. The branch that flew into the hiding place should have impaled Derek. It should have pierced directly through his chest and killed him. But, it didn't. It pushed him backward, twisting him to the side with the force of the impact, moving him out of the way. The branch was slowed down by the impact – kinetic energy being expelled against his flesh with noise and heat but it didn't slow down enough for it to not slide into Paige's abdomen. It didn't have enough force to kill her though, just pierced her flesh and made the air fill with the smell of blood and bodily waste. Derek knew it was bad.

Derek had used his body to protect her, more debris slamming into his body while he tried to keep off her. It took him a long time to realise that he was _floating_. Not just hunkered over her like he thought but actually hovering over her in the air like a balloon. Finally, the hurricane actually passed and Derek had picked Paige up, making sure not to jostle her too much. He drove towards the hospital but by the time he'd made it there she was gone and it was all his fault.

If Paige was a heart-shattering mistake, then Kate Argent was the Apocalypse of mistakes.

He met her when he was in pain but she had sought him out – a fact he didn't know for almost six months. She wasn't sure if he was the right one – wasn't sure who exactly it had been in the spacecraft that left Krypton.

She was how he found out more about himself.

Kate was gorgeous and older and she listened to him talk about losing Paige. She pretended to care about him and he told her everything – almost everything. He never told her about being an alien or the fact he'd discovered he was basically indestructible, that he could run faster than the grain train, that he could see through things, that he was capable of hovering in the air if he concentrated hard enough out in the corn field. She knew somehow though.

One day, when he walked into the kitchen it was to find his mother, father, and Cora tied to chairs. She had a green rock in her hands that made him _hurt_. He was tired to a chair as well, the rock pressing into this chest. Then she'd started talking. She talked about her father, General Gerard, who had been banished to the Phantom Zone by Derek's biological father. Her father who had been training her to be a warrior to follow him into the military. She talked about her revenge when she killed his biological mother as her world crumbled around them. They were people that Derek had no actual memory of but to know that they are dead, and had been dead since he was just a baby was a blow he definitely wasn't expecting. She had been 'rescued' from the dying planet by the La Loba – an ancient enemy of the Kryptonians. She was not their only prisoner – but she was the only one to have survived their experiments on her.

She shot his father in the leg when she explained that they had manipulated her DNA. She took pleasure shooting his mother when she told him how they had altered her so that she was no longer Kryptonian, no longer that which would make her strong. He understood that she was here to punish him as she took her anger out on Cora with her fists and Derek struggled to get away, struggled to help them. He knew he was crying as he begged her to let his family go and she laughed at him. Laughed at him as she killed his father. Derek had never heard a noise like the one his mother made as his father died. He had never hated anyone as he hated her in that moment and himself for bringing her into their lives.

In the end it was Laura who saved them. Laura who had come home early – Laura who realised something was wrong and called the police, Laura who yanked the green stone off his chest. It was also Laura who stopped him from killing Kate before the police could get there. It was Laura who saved his mother and Cora. And then, later, it was Laura who held him together.

There was no comfort in the fact that he now knew things about himself that he'd always wondered about – his father was Jor-El, his mother Lara, his planet was called Krypton and now that Kate was no longer in possession of her true Kryptonian heritage he was the very last member of his species. But, he stood at his father's funeral and would have given all of his power, all of the knowledge he now possessed, just to bring his father back.

Everyone told him it was not his fault. Everyone talked to him about being the victim of an abuser, about the fault lying with Kate and never with him. His mother sent him to a psychiatrist, insisted on family sessions, made Cora and Laura attend bereavement counselling but none of it stopped Derek from knowing, knowing in every part of his body, that it was his fault that Kate came after them. If his family had not taken him in, if his biological family had not saved him in the place of everyone else, if he had not have survived the hurricane, if he had not needed someone to care about him so desperately, then Kate would not have been able to use him, she would never have been able to kill his father or shoot his mother and Cora wouldn't wake screaming in the night.

Eventually, Cora and his mother moved past the trauma and Derek tried. Holy crap, did he try. He saw anyone his mother asked him to. He worked day and night to keep their farm going, he studied harder that he had before. None of it worked though. When he graduated he knew he would have to go to university, and he had been accepted to more than one, but he didn't know how to do it.

Laura had saved him again then. She deferred university, she sold her car and his, she pooled every bit of savings either of them had and she bought them two plane tickets to Rio de Janeiro. His mother had smiled at him at the airport and told him how much she loved him. They travelled through Brazil for almost three months, enjoying Carnival, before they moved on. Derek hadn't been able to stop himself from getting in the way of a man with a gun and a girl begging to be left alone. They'd fled that night. Their dad had always talked about wanting to visit South America – he and their mother had gone to France for their honeymoon but he always talked about going to South America when he retired and Cora, Laura, and Derek had decided who was taking over the farm. Derek had always thought he'd be the one to do it; Laura wanted to be a doctor and Cora wanted out of Beacon Hills – she wanted to see everything. Derek had never really had big plans for his life.

After leaving Rio they visited all of the places that their father had talked about going. And Derek helped people. He'd only ever lived in Beacon Hills where the worst crime someone committed was a break and enter and that had only been the once in the whole time Derek had been growing up. The worst thing that could really happen to someone in Beacon Hills was a natural disaster and luckily for all of them there had only been two in sixteen years. Farming accidents were much more likely than anything else that could happen to a person. But, the outside world was different – there was crime, there were accidents, there were so many different things that could happen to someone. And Derek discovered he could help – and he did help. He helped the man in Araguaina who was being mugged. He helped the shop owner in Chimbote who was being robbed. He helped the Tarijan woman who had been trapped during a flood. And the family in Comodoro Rivadavia who had been trapped in their car. Each person he helped changed Derek.

When Derek had been little, before he'd know about the spaceship and Krypton and everything else, his father would read him stories of heroes and gods – Egyptian, Norse, Greek, Roman, Persian, Celtic, everything. Derek knew the tales of Heracles and Loki, Horus and Balor, before he had been able to write his own name. Derek knew what the tales were really about – it was about being a good person, about battling the demons and beasts inside of yourself, and about using all of the power you had to make the world better. And with each person that Derek helped he was able to think about his dad – to think about him and not feel like he had killed his own father.

They had been gone for almost six months, they'd seen all of the places that their father had always talked about but Derek wasn't ready to go home yet. He felt like he was getting there; he finally felt like he was starting to feel like…maybe not himself because he'd never be that same boy again, but more like someone who felt like Derek Hale. He knew Laura would go with him – she'd follow him anywhere, but he knew she didn't really want to. She had enjoyed their time travelling but her heart was back in Boston at school moving towards what she'd always wanted.

"I'm not ready to go home, Laura," Derek said, one night as they drank beer and watched the moon dance on the waves.

"I know," she said with a grin. "Where are we going next?"

Derek shrugged. "I'm not sure where I'm going but you're going back to Boston."

"Nope," Laura said, turning to face him with her most mulish expression. "I'm sticking with you, little bro."

"You want to go back to uni, you want to be a doctor who's sleep deprived and saves people."

"I can go back anytime."

Derek nodded. "I don't want you to go, but, Laura, you miss it."

"I want to be with you."

Derek smiled. "You want to protect me. You're always trying to protect me."

"You have no idea," Laura said, definitively not looking at him. "You have absolutely no idea what you've been like since Dad died. I thought you were going to kill yourself."

"I wouldn't do that, Laura, I couldn't do that to any of you."

"You were a ghost and we were terrified. And you're not better yet."

Derek smiled. "No, but I'm getting better. Do you remember when Dad used to read us the myths?" Laura nodded. "And do you remember hearing of Castor and Pollux – that one was destined to live in the sky and the other in the underworld?"

Laura turned to look at him. "Which one am I?"

"Pollux, of course."

"I'm not ready to leave you alone."

"Okay, but if you stick around it can only be for the rest of the year."

"What about you?"

"I'm not sure what I'm going to do anymore, Laura. I always thought you'd be the doctor and you might come back to Beacon Hills but you'd be the doctor and things would be good. Cora would leave and move to France or something and I'd just stay at home – go off to the local university, help out on the farm until Dad decided he was done waiting and took Mum off on this trip."

"And now you're the one who's travelling and Cora's back home."

"For now. I know I should go back and help them but-"

Laura grabbed his arm. "No, Mum is more than capable and we have good farm hands. All you need to do is find whatever it is now that makes you happy."

"At the moment I like moving, seeing different things, but I want to keep helping people."

"The money isn't going to last forever."

"I've been thinking about that," Derek said, pulling the article he'd printed out the last time they had hunted down an internet café to contact Cora and their Mum. "I could do this."

Laura just laughed.

So, they left South America, hopping on a plane and heading to New Zealand. Derek contacted the people who'd put out the ad and he sent them a collection of articles he'd written on the trip about the places they had been. And that was how Derek Hale became a travel writer. They spent the rest of Laura's time between New Zealand and Australia. Derek kept writing, kept sending off the articles, and they kept buying them – he developed a reputation for writing about the 'off the beaten track' places. They left Fitzroy Crossing on a Tuesday in the middle of the wet season just to get to Perth and to get Laura home. He couldn't remember her ever holding him so close, so tightly, as she did while they were saying goodbye. Not even the day their Dad died, or the day of the funeral. Laura had never been the type of person to cry but she pressed her face into his neck with a wet trail. When she was gone he found his way to the closest pub and tried to get nice and drunk – it didn't work. Derek didn't leave Perth until he was sure she was home and safe. Then he got himself really lost.

That's when he learned the most interesting thing about himself. He was in the middle of the Great Sandy Desert – nothing but red dirt and shimmering air and the sun. He had never been anywhere that was so completely lonely. He was sitting there, under the hot sun in the middle of the day, and he realised he had never, not once in his life, had a sunburn. He had never been so distanced from the rest of the Earth and it was the very first time in his life that he'd felt completely free to test out his abilities. He ran faster than he could ever remember running, he froze a small patch of desert with his breath, he made beautiful glass sculptures with desert sand and his heat vision (which he sent to his mother), but no matter how high he jumped, or how hard he focussed, he could not see another person, another living thing. So he tried something he'd been wondering about since something flippant that Kate had said to him when she'd been ranting about all that she had lost. He thought back to the day Paige died when he had hovered above her to protect her. Derek had been so sad after Paige died and so scared that someone else would find out what he was after Kate to ever try it again. He had not felt safe enough before to try but there – so utterly removed from every sign of humans, he finally felt confident doing it. And discovered he could fly.

Derek spent most of the next six years travelling to every place he could. His articles paid for most of it but he also worked as a seasonal fruit picker under a sun hotter than he'd ever known before. He worked as a shearer, enjoying the look of shock on the faces of the older shearers when he proved to be a less green than they thought. He spent time teaching English to little kids who just wanted him to teach them to swear. He worked in pubs and clubs, hotels and one brothel – but he didn't know about that beforehand. His articles got picked up by the New York Times, the Daily Planet, the Morning Bugle, The Guardian, and more. He discovered a talent for languages that he'd never noticed before and wrote articles in languages that he learned.

He went home a few times; for Cora's graduation – he surprised his mother and she'd cried and hugged him and told him he looked beautiful with his full, black beard. He came home for Laura's graduation and spent almost two months visiting the world's largest tourist attractions with her before she went off to Med School. He came home for his mother's birthday one year just because she looked so sad on Skype.

He was sitting in a café in Casablanca on his twenty-fifth birthday and he realised he just missed home. He missed the air that would come into the house smelling of dirt, heat, and dust. His missed the cold bite of winter huddled under his great-grandmother's patchwork quilt. He missed Beacon Hills and he missed seeing his family every day. So, he packed himself up and found a deserted part of the city to take off from. He landed in the corn fields in the dark and realised he had not entirely thought everything through.

He hadn't told any of his family about being able to fly. It didn't seem like something he could tell them while he was still away. And it was only because he was selfish – if they knew he could fly they would never understand why he came home so rarely. He trekked back to the house and settled himself onto the couch they still kept on the porch for the dogs. They never used it, preferring to hunker down in the barn. Derek fell asleep easily and woke to a loud scream just before Cora launched herself at him and they both tumbled off the couch and onto the porch.

His mother had whispered his name before she yanked him into a fierce hug. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm home," Derek explained.

"When you say home," Cora asked, "do you mean home for a visit or home to look after the farm and stop Mum from worrying about you?"

"Home to help with the farm and to stop you all worrying."

"I didn't worry," Cora told him, rolling her eyes. "I was jealous."

"Are you sure?" His mother asked, her eyes not quite trusting.

"I missed home. I think I've got everything out of the trip I needed."

"Trip?" Cora exclaimed. "You've been gone for seven years."

Derek blinked at her slowly. "Seven years?"

She nodded.

"Seems longer when you say it like that."

"It has been seven years," his mother said quietly.

"I'm sorry, Mum, I just-"

She shook her head to cut him off. "Nope, you did exactly what you needed to do. Now, come inside and I'll make you pancakes."

So, Derek spent the next six months working on his family's farm. All of the old blogs, sites, papers, and people who'd bought his work before had told him how disappointed they were to hear he would no longer be providing them with articles. It was Lydia Martin – the woman who ran a very successful online news outlet, that simply would not let it go. So, he ended up writing a fortnightly article about returning to the family farm in a small town for her. He didn't, personally, think anyone actually read it but she kept telling him they did.

Then Laura received her residency at Metropolis City Hospital. Derek's mother had never really been a worrier when they were growing up – she had always been the rock that their entire life was centred around. But, since their father's death she worried about them more. Derek hadn't realised just how badly until he saw the way she worried about Laura moving to Metropolis. Metropolis was only three hours away but as the biggest city in the country and the one with the worst crime rate. Derek realised belatedly, that while his years away were exactly what he needed to make peace with what happened to his father, and to find who he really was, it must have been horrible for his mother.

It probably still was. He had never made it a secret that he flew away almost every night. Finding a way to _help_ people. He knew she was awake when he returned but she'd never been the type to go to sleep early and he had just…assumed she was reading.

Derek just wanted to make it better. And in the end, that meant making it worse.

"Would you worry more or less," he asked, one night when Cora was in town on a date with their farm hand Isaac. "If I went and kept Laura safe?"

"Laura doesn't need protecting," his mother said.

"I know," Derek nodded. "She's without a doubt the strongest of us all but you worry about her."

"I worry about all of you."

"I'm sorry I made you worry about me so much."

"I think it made me worry about _you_ less to worry about you out there connected to the world than when you were here disconnected from yourself and all of us."

Derek had been bigger than his mother since his growth spurt at fifteen, but she'd still always pulled him into her like she was the best kind of blanket. Now, he wrapped his arms around her.

"It would be good for you to be in Metropolis," she said, a long while later.

"What?"

"It's been good having you home but you have to fly away every night to help people. If you were in Metropolis you would be able to help them without going anywhere."

"It would be a lot more dangerous. When I was travelling, I'd move on when I helped people."

"I've been thinking about that," she said. She stood up and walked away, coming back minutes later with a few newspaper cut-outs and a large cardboard box. She laid the paper clippings on the table in front of him. He reached out and fanned them – there were ones from the Daily Bugle of Spiderman out in New York.

"I couldn't wear a mask like that."

His mother nodded and he looked back – there was a clipping of Wonder Woman, with her long, flowing red hair and the haughty expression that was her trademark.

"That would work better," he said. "But, how would I hide who I am?"

Talia pulled an old, heavy pair of glasses out of the box – they had been his fathers. He slipped them on and had to blink a couple of times before his eyes adjusted.

"We can replace the lens with plain glass."

"No," he said, smiling. "This sells it better."

"It will hurt your eyes."

Derek shook his head. "That's not how my eyes work. It's just a matter of altering my focus – like when I see through things or over distances."

"You're sure?"

Derek nodded. "What else have you been planning?"

"This," she said, frowning. She opened the box and pulled out a mass of red and blue fabric. "I know it's garish but…it might distract them from your face."

Derek grimaced. "Show me."

She stood up and shook out the fabric. It was basically a leotard – bright blue with red embellishments over his groin like underwear, and a long red cape.

"A cape?"

"You can fly."

"It's very form fitting."

"You eat like a fifteen year old whose family is away but I know you've got the physique to pull it off."

Derek rubbed a hand over his face. "I suppose I'll try it on then."

"There are red boots too," she said, pulling them out of the box. "They are thin and should fit inside of shoes like thick socks."

Derek collected it all up and then went into his bedroom to change. He pulled on the suit and realised that the jocks on the outside were a great way to hide his…endowments, much better than the thick lycra of the rest of the suit would have. He threw his arms out and watched in the mirror as the cape fluttered out behind him. He had to think it would look especially good when he landed. He felt like it was missing something though so he turned and went downstairs to show his mother. She cried when she saw him.

"Mum?"

"You're just…we wanted to protect you. We found you out there all alone and we brought you home so that we could protect you, could love you and keep you safe forever. And, now, you're wearing a superhero costume and I'm not sure if I'm doing the right thing."

"You're still protecting me," he said, wrapping his arms around her. "It's protecting me from being recognised so I can help people. Helping people is something you and Dad always taught us to do."

Talia nodded, wiping at her eyes. "I thought it might need something else, and I found this in your ship with you – it was sewed onto the blanket you were wrapped in. She pulled out a bit of stiff fabric, pentagonal in shape with a large, stylised red 'S' on a yellow background. "There are two – I was thinking one for your chest and one for the cap?"

"That seems perfect." Derek did think it was perfect – and it was him. Talia and Jonathan Hale had made him the person he was but it was that little Kryptonian touch that made all of this work. He changed out of the suit and handed it to her.

Derek flickered through the rest of the newspaper clippings while she was sewing. It was obvious she took her inspiration from Wonder Woman and Spiderman but there were also clippings from Green Arrow, standing with her long brown hair and dark green eye mask, arrow knocked and ready.

When she was done the suit was perfect. Even Cora and Laura agreed.

Laura came home, she had two months before she would have to be in Metropolis to start her residency and she spent that time on the farm. It was strange of have them all back home together but Derek was glad for it. Especially now that he had a disguise and could go out during the daytime. They had all talked about it – if someone realised who he was they might come after his family and he couldn't force that upon them. Cora had hit him on the back of the head with the folded up newspaper for even suggesting he didn't go out and help people for their sake.

Derek went out for the first time that night, dressed in his mother's uniform with his beard newly shaven off. His face felt vaguely naked without the bristles he'd been growing for years but the rest of him was on much more of a display than his face. He'd been wearing his father's glasses since the night his mother had given them to him. It was a simple matter really – slicking back his hair, sliding the glasses off, and being someone else.

The strangest part was when they all hugged him – one after another, telling him to be safe. Derek had slipped out of the house and taken to the air. He wasn't all that sure where to go that first night – he could go absolutely anywhere on the planet, but his body took him to Metropolis. He flew over the city, listening for people in need and swooping in to save them where he could.

It was just before dawn when it happened – he knew he shouldn't have still been out but he didn't have to hide and he felt buzzed from being able to openly help people. Then he heard it, the sharp rap of a gunshot. His first thought was that someone was shooting at a pest, or putting an animal out of its misery, then reality sunk in and he was up and flying before he'd even made the decision to. He landed in the middle of an alley, two guys standing at the other end, one, smaller, but with the stench of heroin wafting off him, holding a gun up against the other man's neck. Derek walked over to them trying to work out if the taller of the two, face hidden in a red hoodie, was really the one he should be helping – he'd learned, the hard way, that it wasn't always obvious. As he got closer he could smell the clay from the bullet hole in the wall near the hooded head, the reek of gunpowder, and the putrid smell of old sweat.

"Fuck off," the smaller guy called, turning to glare and then freezing. "What the fuck?"

Derek folded his arms across his chest, flexing as much as possible. "Put down the gun."

The guy didn't, swinging it around and taking aim at Derek – or where Derek used to be. Derek grabbed the gun out of the guy's hand and then, gently, punched him in the cheek so he fell over unconscious. Derek wanted to squeeze down on the gun – destroy it, but he knew the Sheriff's Department would need the evidence. He ejected the bullets, squeezing them between his fingers and dropping them onto the bitumen. When Derek was done, he turned and looked at the hooded figure.

The guy threw back his hood and Derek found himself face-to-face with Stiles Stilinksi – Daily Planet Reporter… _the_ Daily Planet reporter.

"What the hell?" Stiles exclaimed, looking Derek up and down.

Derek felt suddenly self-conscious in the outfit his mother had made for him and wished he could cover himself. If there was one person, on the planet, who was definitely going to see through his costume it was Stiles Stilinski.

Derek nodded at him and forced his voice down as deep as it could go. "Are you hurt?"

"No, but-hey, you can fly? Who are you?"

Derek didn't respond and didn't wait for more questions he spun around and flew home as swiftly as his body could take him.

He rushed into Beacon Hills proper first thing the next morning and bought The Daily Planet. He read it cover to cover as he walked home slowly but there was no mention of a strange man who could fly and wore spandex. He rushed home then, the weight of being caught off his shoulders, and collapsed into his bed after doing his chores at super speed. He'd never been so happy that their animals seemed immune to his presence.

Laura woke him up later by taking a running jump and landing on his back. Derek grunted but didn't bother moving.

"What do you want?" He growled into the pillow.

"Why'd you stay out so late?"

"Was fun."

"And then you rushed into town this morning to see if you were in the papers?"

"Mmmmm," Derek had never told Laura that her weight on his back had never felt like much of anything and certainly not enough to stop him from going to sleep.

"You looked in the wrong place."

Derek opened his eyes and tumbled Laura off him so that he could look at her. "What?"

"This is so sad," she explained. "You are an internet blogger – you should have known to go to the internet first."

"Just show it to me."

She rolled her eyes. "Nope, you can do my chores if you want to see it."

"No."

"Yep."

"Oh my God," Cora yelling running into his bedroom. "You're famous!"

She bounded onto the bed and thrust her tablet in front of his face. He could see a grainy CCTV footage photo of himself under which Flying Man was typed in big, bold letters.

Derek laughed at Laura and pulled the tablet closer. He scrolled through the article – they didn't have much information on him but it was a good article. Her scrolled back up to the top and was surprised to not see Stilinski in the by-line – he'd put money on the reporter having written it though.

And that was how they spent the next two months; Derek would go out and be…whatever the hell his superhero name should be, and the next morning they would all crowd around and check out his press.

Derek managed to avoid any reporters, as far as he knew, until his first week in Metropolis. Laura had rented an apartment and so far his own job had been to make it habitable. But, he'd called in a favour with Lydia Martin and she told him to meet him at a coffee shop downtown. When he got there she was not alone. An older man, bald with a little goatee and moustache, was sitting across from her. Deaton, Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Planet. An hour later he had a job as a reporter for the newspaper and the order to keep writing his column now that he'd moved from a little town to Metropolis. He still didn't think anyone read the column but he never said no to a job.

The next morning he arrived at The Daily Planet and spent most of the morning in HR hell – a new experience that he was hoping to never have to live through again. Then a younger guy with brown hair, multiple tattoos, and eyes like a puppy came to collect him.

"I'm Scott McCall, one of the junior photojournalists," the younger man said, smiling at him gently. "Deaton asked me to come and get you. Thought it would be nice to have me introduce you to everyone."

So, Derek Hale – without the costume and with the glasses and his hair left to its natural curl, met Stiles Stilinski. Whatever Derek had been expecting, it was not the quick flick of eyes or the smirk.

"Newbie," Stiles said, sarcasm dripping off his words. "Excellent, you're with me. Double homicide couple blocks from here. You ready?"

Derek nodded – he had everything he could need in his bag and he'd certainly never had a chance to sit down.

"Good, come on. Scotty, you're our photographer."

"Yep," Scott said, rushing away and coming back with a large camera bag.

The drive to the scene was mostly quiet – the taxi driver singing to Taylor Swift the only noise in the car. The police tape was set up and the forensics people were already in their white protective clothing, the deputies standing around at the periphery – not much use until the evidence was all collected. Derek followed Stiles and Scott as they walked the length of tape and then stopped, a smile on Stiles' face again.

"Hiya, Pops," Stiles said, waving at the Sheriff who was standing on the other side of the crime scene tape.

The man walked over and smiled. "Good to see you, son. I expect you on Sunday for lunch regardless of this."

"And what," Stiles asked, flipping his notebook open, "is this?"

The Sheriff turned away from them, laughing all the way.

"Your father is the Sheriff?" Derek asked.

"Yep."

Derek made a vague noise as Stiles turned his full attention on him, his honey eyes glaring at him darkly.

"Problem?"

Derek shook his head – ignoring the flare of _want_ that suddenly sliced through him. Laura was going to laugh at him for days. "No, just didn't know."

"Okay, so, Deaton hired you so you can't be useless. Give me your background."

So, Derek did – travel writer for six years, column on Lydia Martin's website, articles here and there for the Beacon Hills Chronicle, and now reporter for The Daily Planet.

"Why did he want me to show you around then?" Stiles muttered to himself. "Whatever, let's get started – follow my lead, ask questions if they are relevant, and try not to get in any of Scott's shots."

Derek nodded and settled in to do exactly what Stiles asked of him. Which, as it turned out, was going to be something he would become very good at.

-)(-)(-

I do plan on writing a second chapter – unless you think I should pretend this never happened.


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